


Kara Zor-El: Rewrite the Stars

by SyrenCallista



Category: Supergirl (Comics), Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Origin Story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-18 19:44:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20644652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyrenCallista/pseuds/SyrenCallista
Summary: In this newly imagined take on the classic Supergirl mythology, Kara Zor-El awakens from the destruction of her planet to a traumatic crash-landing on Earth with one purpose: find and protect her baby cousin. Disoriented and frightened, her first contact is with two of the most terrifying protectors of Gotham: the Dark Knight, and Batwoman.What follows is the story of an alien girl struggling to find her place in a world that isn't hers, with the people around her trying to protect her from the burdens of heroism. Yet when her new world is faced with a cataclysmic threat from her old one, Kara must decide just who she will be.





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> For a couple of years now, and with thanks to a cherished roleplay partner, I've long been fascinated with the idea of a relationship between Kara Zor-El and Kate Kane. And as that idea has played out I found myself wanting to give my spin on Kara's origin. In writing this I wanted to explore the reality of a young woman who has lost her entire world, and who does not take the decision to be a hero lightly.
> 
> While I am attempting a new spin on a famous story, I must acknowledge the numerous other works that have influenced me: the Batman/Superman and Supergirl series, originated by Jeph Loeb and Michael Turner, the New 52 Supergirl series, Supergirl Rebirth, the amazing Supergirl CW series, the DC Cinematic Universe, and Supergirl: Being Super. Thanks for taking the time to read!

Begin Audio Log records

**Audio Log One**:

“My name is Kara Zor-El, and I think I am going to die soon. I don’t know why I am making this, I don’t think anyone will ever see it, and if they did, they won’t even understand it. Nine days ago my world ended… my planet died, everyone I ever knew…. Almost everyone, they died too. This pod was supposed to take me across the stars but it was damaged when Krypton exploded and knocked it off course. I woke up and everything was shaking. I was able to plot a new course, but there is something in the way. I’m not sure what it is… it isn’t on any of the navigation charts. I can’t find any sign of Kal-El’s pod…I hope that it means he made it. I’m coming, Kal.”

**Audio Log Two**:

“It has been eighty days since my pod was pulled in by the anomaly. Nothing I’ve done has worked to get out. I’ve tried diverting power from the stasis field generator to give additional power to the engines to try to get out…it’s why I keep waking up, and it hasn’t worked. It’s only prevented me from getting pulled all the way in. Nothing has changed. Sometimes I think I see shapes inside and I don’t know if they are real or if I’m just going crazy. I don’t know why I’m making this… I think maybe I just wanted to hear something. Anything. It’s so quiet.”

**Audio Log Fifteen**:

“It’s been 100 days, I think, and nothing has changed. The pod’s computers are starting to malfunction and are losing their time calibrations. I don’t know what else to do. I’m going to restore the initial programming and let the pod put me to sleep. That will make the engines shut down, and I’ll be pulled all the way into the anomaly…. and I don’t know what will happen. Mom…Dad…. we tried our best. I know you didn’t want any of this to happen. Maybe I shouldn’t have left. I should have listened. It’s so much worse. Kal…I was supposed to protect you, and I couldn’t even get there. I am so, so sorry. I hope…no, I pray, my last prayer to Rao, that you are safe. I’m sorry.”

End Audio Log records.

Kara Zor-El’s world ended in the violent death of her planet with all that she had ever known blasted into pieces, hurled into the stars. Much like her. It was a nightmare that she seemed destined to relive again and again in her mind’s eye. And so when she was jolted awake, she was brought back to consciousness with the atmospheric violence that was so eerily familiar. The darkness that she had been so accustomed to was interrupted by fiery orange flames licking at her pod as it streaked at long last towards her destination. Sound, absent for so long, now came back in a fury: the thunderous roar of her pod cutting into the atmosphere, warnings from the pod, and an earsplitting cacophony of noise that she was too disoriented to process. 

The fire and the roar gave way, only to be replaced by a stomach-turning sensation of a new gravity rushing to meet her as her pod careened through a night’s sky towards its final destination. Lights and darkness intermingled, flashing before the girl’s eyes that tried to adjust and process everything that she was seeing for the first time. And then, all too soon, a new darkness rushed up to meet her, and her pod seemed all too eager to meet it. Kara’s body was jolted by the impact of her pod hitting the water, a huge explosion marking its arrival, before it started its descent into the murky depths.

Kara shook her head and found herself focused on the sound of her own breathing as she tried to clear her head. The disorientation should have passed already, but she still couldn’t shake it. She looked over the displays in the pod and found it hard to make sense of what she was seeing. Clearly the pod had been damaged, for it displayed her body still fitting normal measurements for 16 years of age, and yet the onboard logs recalibrated to show that she had been sleeping for 28 years. Impossible.

She reached out to adjust the level of illumination within the pod and was able to see her face reflected on the transparent shield…and the face she saw was the one she remembered. The same young face that the ship had recorded during her logs. Proof, she thought, that the pod had been damaged, as she clearly was not twenty-eight years older. As she fought against the haze and disorientation of her long stasis, she accessed the ship’s log of her journey. The date of Krypton’s destruction was the last entry that made sense, from there the logs and notated measurements seemed so nonsensical that they had to be corrupted. When her ship’s trajectory finally matched up with that of Kal-El’s pod, the information looked as she’d expected.

Kal-El. Just thinking her baby cousin’s name helped her clear some of the haziness from her head, helping her refocus on her purpose.

Kara looked through the clear protective shell of her ship at the murky darkness of the water surrounding her and activated the exterior lighting array to take better stock of her surroundings. The ship displayed an estimation of how deep the ship had sank and the temperature of the water, and she knew that she would be able to reach the surface. A touch of the interface dissolved the front shell of the pod, allowing water to rush in. She had braced for it to be freezing, and much to her surprise it was bearable: cool, yet nothing she couldn’t tolerate. As soon as the water hit her Kara brought her hands together and kicked her legs hard, and immediately she launched upwards, impossibly fast.

Kara burst upward towards the surface, and when she broke through it a geyser of water was thrown upward as her kicking launched her clear out of the bay and across the night sky. The moment she broke the surface her senses were assaulted with the lights and sounds of the planet, punctuated by her scream as she tumbled through the air, arms flailing, helpless to stop herself. She careened towards a building, and with nothing left to do she wrapped her arms around herself to try and protect herself from an impact that would probably kill her. There was a thunderous crash as she impacted the side of a building and bounced off of it, cracking the façade, as her new trajectory sent her tumbling into the ground. The cement cratered when she landed, the impact seeming to knock the breath out of her.

As she lay there on the ground Kara was awaiting for the pain to start radiating through her body, and when it didn’t she could only imagine that it was shock preventing her from feeling it. Even though her heart was beating so fast and loudly that she could almost hear it, it was near impossible to pick out because she was hearing so much. So many strange noises that all seemed like they were right on top of her, and yet when she lifted her head and looked around there was nothing. Only darkness, sparsely illuminated by dim light sources on straight poles. As she looked around she saw that there were structures all around her of various sizes, strange and somehow seeming old, many weathered and aged by time and disservice. The shadows seemed at war with the dim light, and some even seemed to move.

Bombarded by so many different sounds and unable to focus on just what was around her, Kara didn’t detect the movement behind her until something touched her hand. She screamed and jolted to her feet, and when she spun around, she saw a man dressed in brown clothing, dirty, wide-eyed and seemingly as surprised as she was. It triggered an immediate response, she turned and ran as fast as she could to get away from him, and away from the shadows that seemed to surge and follow after her.

Running without knowing where to go, Kara followed the path of the lights, chasing them and running away from the unknown. The side street she raced along opened up to a larger thoroughfare which had seemed so distant at first, and then suddenly she was there in the middle of it. The lights that she’d been chasing roared towards her, and she realized at that moment that the lights now seemed to be chasing her. A vehicle raced towards her, before emitting a high-pitched screech just as its lights focused on her, before it swerved away. She dove the other way to avoid being hit and started running again. Once more the lights seemed to pursue her as she fled the vehicles and the roaring sounds they seemed to make.

And then there was a roar behind her that was unmistakable, a sound loud and distinct that she could focus on. When she turned to look back, she immediately wished she hadn’t: a different sort of vehicle bore down on her, low to the ground, dark as the shadows, faster than the others, its frame sharp and jagged. Kara ran faster, away from it, instinctively knowing that it was chasing her. She knew she was running fast, and still it stayed with her, its roar becoming louder. Kara changed her direction abruptly and cut down an alleyway, hoping to escape whatever was chasing her. As soon as she ran into the alley, she heard another screech, this time followed by a stranger sound that made her look up. As she did, she saw a looming shadow moving through the air, darker than the night sky. She didn’t scream, instead she put her head down and ran faster, until a sound right behind her preceded an impact that sent her sprawling forward, losing her balance, tumbling across the ground.

Disoriented and yet strangely unhurt once more, Kara looked around wildly for what had struck her, and at first, she missed it. But when she found it, it made her scream: the shape seemed to gather the shadows and wear them, draped around it like a cape. The shape of its head was offset by two sharply pointed ears jutting from atop, and its eyes seemed to glow faintly white with no visible pupils. It stepped out of the deepest shadows towards her, looming above her, and said something, its deep voice making her scream again. Things seemed to move in slow motion then:

Kara started to twist around to regain her feet in preparation of running again. Yet as she started to move, so too did the dark figure, an arm appearing out of the darkness, pointing something at her. She couldn’t see the rest because she had already turned, pushed to her feet, and made her first two steps. A sharp sound almost like a ‘pop’ sounded behind her, and as she started to run a tether leapt out of the darkness and started to encircle her body. As she took her third step the line encircled her torso and went taut, and immediately she felt it pulling on her, threatening to pull her back into the darkness, back towards it.

Feeling the line pull against her, Kara let her fear propel her forward, away from the shadow. On her fourth step she leapt and shot upward through the air. This time her scream was in surprise, momentarily forgetting the thing attached to her from behind as her hair whipped through the air as she streaked upward, arms pinwheeling as if that would be enough to alter her chaotic trajectory. There was suddenly a building in front of her and Kara grabbed at the roof’s edge, catching it at the top of her jump, scrambling then to get atop it. There was still a strange line attached to her waist, but there no was longer a weight nor a shadow attached to it.

On the rooftop Kara looked around wildly, attempting to find her pursuer. Then she looked up, and saw it descending on her, its great wings fanned out, blotting out the light in the sky. She suddenly perceived what looked like feet aimed at her chest, and instinctively she fell back just as they hit her. As she fell to her back, the shape was immediately upon her, the shape’s face in hers, its white eyes piercing hers, growling at her again in its strange way. It was pinning her arms, and unwilling to be trapped, Kara twisted to her side. She didn’t have time to think upon how easily she was able to do it, she only realized that one arm was now free. As the shadow tried to restrain her, Kara swiped at it, a backhand strike to try to get it away from her. She heard the sound it made at the second she saw the shadow get launched off of her, thrown off of her as if it had a rocket attached to it. Kara looked at her hands in confusion as she realized what she’d just done.

* * *

Inside Batman’s cowl, his suit flashed numerous warnings as he was thrown backward, the wind driven out of his lungs by the force of the blow he just received. The strike had triggered emergency deployment of trauma places in the chestpiece of this armor to mitigate the damage, but it could do little to dissipate the concussive force that hit him. When he hit an adjacent rooftop he lay dazed for a second before he rolled to his feet, assessing that he’d avoided broken ribs or cracking the back of his head while he landed.

“Threat level Omega,” he said softly, activating a myriad of protocols and alerting others to the greatly escalated stakes of the unknown entity they were facing. He toggled a control node on his belt and then looked to the sky, waiting. As he waited, he heard a response through the integrated comm-system in his cowl.

“I’m on her.”

* * *

A mile away another engine roared to life on the streets of Gotham. Smaller by far, but the sound it made was no less intimidating. Its two tires screeched before the motorcycle peeled off down the street, no illumination to be found on it whatsoever. Every other street light caught the streaks of red of the rider’s hair as she raced through the city. Behind the white lenses of her cowl information was being fed to her from drone imagery and sensors, and she could see the target moving across the rooftops. Even as Batwoman navigated the streets in front of her, she also watched the movements of the target as she plotted an intercept point.

She hit the brakes hard and pulled the cycle into a sharp turn down an alley before accelerating once more. Her thumb touched an unremarkable looking toggle near the left handlebar, and a hidden compartment behind her seat opened. She reached back without looking, freeing a compact looking rifle from its holster. Her cape was already flapping fiercely behind her from the speed she was traveling at, which allowed her to easily attach the weapon to a magnetic clip on her belt. No sooner had it snapped into place then her cowl flashed a warning, the intercept path almost upon her.

Batwoman jumped out of her position straddling the bike and perched on the seat, making it look easy when it was anything but. She glanced upward to verify overhead clearance. In a smooth motion she dropped her right hand to her hip, freed the grapnel gun on her hip and fired it up at the lip of a rooftop. The moment it connected she was yanked from the motorcycle and propelled upward, accelerating as she went. As she reached the top of roof she disconnected the line from the grapnel and continued upward, up and over the rooftop, straight into the sky. From the new vantage point she could see the target running across an adjacent rooftop. Batwoman replaced her grapnel gun on her belt and grabbed the edges of cape, which immediately stiffened and caught the air, becoming a glider.

Dropping into a sharp dive to gain speed, Batwoman then banked hard, aiming for the far edge of the next rooftop, and directly into the path of her prey.

* * *

Kara attributed it all to adrenaline as she raced across the rooftops of this strange place, easily jumping from one to another, no sense of what direction she was going or where she even needed to get to. The only thing that she knew was that she needed to get away, as far away as she could, as fast as she could do so. As she leapt to the next rooftop she tracked movement out of the corner of her eye and she gasped.

Seemingly materializing out of the shadows once more, there was another one of those creatures. It flew and dropped out of the sky in front of her. The first one had been all in black, this one had streaks of red and a shock of red hair flowing from its head. It dropped out of the sky, landed in a crouch on the roof, and in the next moment it was pointing something at her. Kara froze in place as she looked at it. It wasn’t completely unfamiliar to her, she knew instinctively that it was a weapon and could see a faint glow that let her know it was energy based. She looked from the weapon, to the person wielding it, and found herself looking at nothing but empty white eyes staring back at her. Kara knew she was breathing fast and couldn’t do anything to slow it down. And then she heard another noise in the sky. Something flying towards her. Adrenaline kicked in to her system and on pure reaction she dove towards cover.

* * *

As Batwoman trained her rifle on the blonde-haired girl who was staring back at her, terrified, she hesitated with her finger on the trigger. Something wasn’t right. The girl was afraid, she could see it in her eyes clearly. Then the Batwing was fast approaching the scene, and seemingly in a blink of an eye the girl was gone, diving behind the large HVAC unit mounted on the rooftop. The movement was so fast that Batwoman wouldn’t have hit her even if she had taken the shot.

“Batman back off, I think…” she started to say, before the words disappeared from her mouth. She had seen the fight or flight instinct in the girl’s eyes. And now, she heard the wrench of metal as before her eyes the girl dug her hands into the HVAC unit, tore it free from the rooftop, and hurled it at the Batwing.

* * *

In the Batwing, Batman had tracked the unknown girl to the rooftop and prepared an assortment of weaponry with which to attack her with. He adjusted the targeting as the girl dove for cover behind the HVAC unit. And then warning claxons sounded in the cockpit when she abruptly dug her hands into the massive unit, lifted it onto her shoulders, and then threw it at her. Immediately he threw the control stick to the side and toggled the jet thrusters for an emergency evasive maneuver. The Batwing’s targeting computer measured the object and calculated its weight at somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 pounds, and the subject had just thrown it like a medicine ball.

Thinking of the damage that an object like that could do, Batman gritted his teeth and swung the Batwing around, locked onto the hurled object, and fired a rocket at it. The vehicle shuddered at the release of the weapon which quickly homed in on the massive HVAC unit, and exploded upon it, disintegrating it into smaller, less lethal pieces.

* * *

Batwoman saw everything that was happening as if it was in slow motion, partially disbelieving it all. It should have been impossible for a girl to throw an object like that, and yet it had just happened before her eyes. Batwoman raised her rifle, looked down the sight and centered it on the girl’s torso, when what she saw made her eyes widen and paused her in place. Her head tilted and she lowered the rifle from her shoulder.

“Stop!” she bid the girl, who had renewed her attention upon her. “Its okay, listen, everything is okay. We don’t want to hurt you, I promise… we are here to help you,” she said, holding out an open, empty hand, willing herself to project a calm voice, trying to buy time to reassess this new information. 

* * *

When Kara dove for cover to protect herself, it was much to her surprise that her fingers dug right into the metallic object that she’d meant to shield her. And when she tried to extract her hand, she felt the whole object crumble in it. Working on instinct alone she grabbed it, felt herself lifting it, and threw it at the flying craft that was hunting her. It had felt heavy in her hands, but not nearly as heavy as it had looked. Yet when she threw it, she knew immediately that something wasn’t right. She should not have been able to move something so massive by herself, much less throw it.

And now she was unprotected against the other figure on the rooftop with her. She turned towards it, thoughts of running or fighting racing through her head. And then it started talking to her. The words were in a language she didn’t understand. But the tone of that voice wasn’t scary, and there was something of a calming intent behind the foreign words.

Kara moved her eyes over Batwoman, and her brow knit further as she examined what she had first believed to be some sort of monster. The two were studying each other. Kara realized that Batwoman was covered in some sort of bodysuit, but when her eyes reached the cowl and saw no eyes looking bat her, just faintly glowing lenses with sharply pointed ears atop, she started to realize she was looking at some sort of a helmet and there were humanoid features visible where the cowl stopped. Kara was overloaded with information and realizations as she tried to calm herself and regain focus enough to figure this all out. But there was so much noise, so much sensory input that focusing was nearly impossible. The high-pitched whine of energy gathering cut through everything else, a sound that she recognized.

* * *

“Batwoman, clear the rooftop! I’m going to freeze her!” Batman’s voice barked into Batwoman’s ear. She had been focused so intently on the strange girl standing across from her that she hadn’t seen him turn the jet around. Now she looked and she saw the cannon with the modified Freeze cryotech powering up. But more than that, she saw that the girl also saw what was happening. The girl turned, looked at the Batwing, then looked back at her. What happened next was so fast that it all seemed to occupy the same moment.

“Negative, stand down! I think she’s…..oh f…” as the words were leaving Batwoman’s lips, she saw the girl tense, then leap directly at her. She was a blur. Even if she had wanted to, she would not have been able to aim and fire her weapon in time. The girl hit her hard enough to drive the wind out of her as if her armor was simply cloth, there was an explosive sound and a blast of freezing air, and then, the next thing she saw, she was flying over Gotham Harbor.

* * *

In the Batwing, Batman waited the final seconds for the freeze cannon to reach full power, even as he ordered Batwoman off of the rooftop, out of the radius of the blast. When the unknown threat, the girl, looked up at him, he knew he had to act immediately. He fired a blast of the freeze cannon at her and could just barely perceive her moving before the blindingly bright blast lit up the night sky and flash-froze the rooftop. In the two seconds it took for the lenses in his cowl to block the light and return his normal vision, he immediately saw two things: the roof was empty, and the jet’s sensors detected an object shooting out over Gotham Harbor.

“Alfred…..call him.”

* * *

Batwoman was flying over Gotham Harbor with the water shimmering in the darkness. The whistling of the air in her ears and the almost violent flutter of her hair spoke to just how fast she was moving, as the city grew further and further away. As she started to regain her bearings she was forced to assess her situation on the literal fly. The girl from the rooftop had tackled her and leapt with her and that jump hadn’t ended yet. Accustomed to swinging and soaring through Gotham’s skies, she knew aerodynamics and knew that they had reached the top of their arc and were now descending, fast. They were going to reach the opposite shore, but at a velocity that neither of them were likely to survive. Batwoman had extremely limited options and virtually no time to make them.

She twisted her body to the side, nimbly swinging around so that where once the girl had been holding her around the waist, now Batwoman was on her back. She locked her legs around the girl’s slender waist in a body triangle, trapping her left ankle behind her right knee, and squeezed hard. In the next moment she threw her arms back and grabbed the scalloped edges of her cape, which stiffened instantly to catch the air and arrest the speed of their descent. Under any normal circumstance Batwoman could have easily glided into a safe, albeit rough landing. But like so much that night it was anything but normal. As the wind caught her cape, the girl was ripped out the grip of Batwoman’s legs like she suddenly weighed a thousand pounds.

“No!” was all she could, calling out as the blonde girl tumbled away from her and towards a much rougher landing that Batwoman could do nothing more to shield her from. When the girl hit the sand it was like a bomb went off under the top layer, fine grit exploding around her body as she cratered several feet down into it. With just her own bodyweight to support Batwoman’s cape helped her glide to a gentle landing a few feet from the crater. She did not walk to the edge of it, instead waiting, feeling the growing certainty that the girl would emerge unscathed.

* * *

Kara had recognized the sound of an energy weapon powering up and faced with that she had only a moment to make the choice and decide that she and the red-and-black clad feminine figure needed to get off of the rooftop. At first she thought there would be no time to manage it, but then that moment began to stretch on. She had turned to run and began to pump her legs, and still the weapon didn’t fire. She was halfway to the other figure before the weapon from the flying craft began to fire. Looking back over her shoulder Kara could see a bright blue-tinged energy blast firing, but the beam itself seemed to be moving incredibly slow, and in that moment she was certain she could outrace it. She looked forward and was nearly upon the woman. Kara reached out, encircled Batwoman around the waist and then leapt as far as she could.

It had only been meant to get them off of the roof and away, but the jump was beyond anything she could have anticipated, and they were soaring through the air as if boosted by a rocket. And like that they were out over a great body of water, and after that they were approaching the far side of the shore when their velocity began to dip. Kara began to pinwheel her arms and hadn’t even realized that Batwoman had wriggled out of her grip and was now clinging to her back. Her arms could do nothing to slow her descent and a brief bit of panic started to set in. Before she could even scream she hit the ground and she felt it give beneath her. The impact jolted her but when it was over she realized once more that she did not seem to be harmed.

Kara shook the grit out of her hair and then tried to climb out which proved difficult. It required a jump, one she took far more carefully than before, managing to get just high enough to scramble out of the crater that she’d made. When she got there the woman was waiting for her, no weapons in hand, no craft flying in the sky, just the two of them. Kara looked at her warily for a few moments, once more settling on the face that she was now certain was masked.

“_I know you don’t understand me, but I’m sorry if I hurt you. I’m looking for someone, a baby, he would have come from the sky. Do you know him?”_ Kara asked in Kryptonian of the masked woman, alarmed, beginning to gesture around.

Batwoman regarded Kara just as warily, shaking her head slightly as the girl began to speak again in that language that she could make absolutely no sense over. Again and again she saw the girl eyeing her mask, and realized that it was likely a barrier from them getting somewhere. As a thought struck her, she took a small step forward and held up a hand to quiet the girl who fell from the sky. Reaching up, Batwoman pressed two concealed points beneath her long, red hair along the back of the cowl, and when just the right amount of pressure was applied, it released. Freed, Batwoman lifted the cowl up and off of her shoulders, her mask with its glowing white eyes, and that long shock of red hair going with it, all connected. Her real hair was far shorter and a different shade of red. Her skin was incredibly pale, as if it rarely saw the sun.

Kara watched with widened eyes as Batwoman silenced her, and removed her mask, revealing a normal face beneath. Kara looked from Batwoman’s now unmasked face to the mask held in her hands with its blank, unreadable eyes. The entire suit put together was terrifying, Kara realized, but seeing who was beneath it immediately made it less scary.

“Krypton,” the red haired woman said, stating the word clearly.

Kara’s blue eyes widened.

_“Krypton? Do you know of Krypton? Do you know where the baby is?” _Kara asked excitedly in Kryptonian.

Batwoman slowly shook her head to try and indicate her lack of understanding. She stepped forward, closer to Kara, then reached out and touched gloved fingertips to the front of Kara’s black garb, to the center of the gray, textured symbol that resided there.

“Krypton,” Batwoman said again, touching the crest again for emphasis. The hope and excitement that had been in the girl’s eyes began to fade. In an effort to recapture it Batwoman pointed to herself and said: “Kate.” Once more she repeated her name while pointing to herself to try to link herself with the name.

_“If you can’t understand me, how did you know that I’m from Krypton?”_ Kara asked in exasperation.

_“Probably because of me,”_ a rich, warm, man’s voice spoke from above them in Kryptonian. The voice had an accent that Kara couldn’t recognize, but the language was unmistakable. She looked up and saw a man floating in the sky, the darkness only serving to mute the red and blue of his clothing. Kara could see the black airship hovering further away, but in that moment it didn’t matter. She was staring at the crest on the flying man’s chest.

_“Why are you wearing my family’s crest?”_ she asked in confusion.


	2. First Steps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Superman knows that there is much that Kara will need to learn, but Kara has some things to teach him as well.

A Few Months Later

Joseph Thomas had spent the last six and a half hours dying. His body was dying slowly from oxygen deprivation and each breath he took was barely enough to keep him moving, for now. And yet, even though he was distinctly aware that he was dying, he willed himself to keep climbing upwards, to ignore the rational part of his brain that told him to stop the perilous climb through the absolutely freezing darkness and to turn back around. This is what he had paid for, trained for, and put his body through so much suffering for, and now he was nearly there, minutes away from summiting Mount Everest. With the sun just beginning to rise, darkness still reigned at the summit, and the fiercely blowing snow ensured he couldn’t yet see it, but he knew he and his climbing party were close.

As the world started to become brighter, the labored breathing seemed to come easier for Joseph, and as the sun lent the ability to see the world, he looked up and saw nothing. He had to lower his eyes to see that the summit was nearly in reach, with nothing else to see but accomplishment and the view of the world from the tallest mountain peak on Earth. And a blonde-haired girl. Joseph blinked his eyes in confusion, and then his heart started to beat faster. There was a blonde-haired girl in a red hooded sweatshirt looking at him from the summit of Everest. Her hair whipped around her, and she was not wearing anything close to the equipment that _might_ allow him to make it down from the mountain alive. At once he started to panic, fearing that altitude sickness had struck him and that he was seeing things. He reached up to wipe at the goggles of his mask, and when he moved his hand away, she was gone.

A few minutes later, when the entire climbing party was at the summit, Joseph found the man that had been climbing behind him if he had seen the girl in the sweatshirt, only to receive an odd look in return. Then everyone was asked, until the Sherpa cautioned him to save his air for the climb down. Only one woman had seemed like she might have seen the girl too, but she refused to admit to it. Not when he’d asked her, nor during their brief session of picture-taking, nor when they’d begun their slow climb down the mountain, faced with the daunting 12-hour descent down from the summit and out of the oft-called death zone.

Whereas he’d led the party for the climb, Joseph found himself in the middle of the line of the party for the descent. It was harder and slower goings for the descent, that they were going downhill still not overcoming the exhaustion from the ascent. Several times the climber behind him had bumped into Joseph, and as the hours wore on it was becoming more frequent. Joseph knew he was slowing down but there was nothing left inside to keep him moving. The first two times he’d fallen, another climber and the Sherpas helped him regain his footing. On the third they could not get him up and endeavored to carry him the rest of the way, which only slowed the party’s progress. And then they’d made the only choice they could: to leave him behind so that they could get the rest of the party to safety.

Joseph drifted in and out of consciousness as he froze, and his body was brought to death’s door. If he could have thought clearly, he would have thought back to his life, his regrets, his accomplishments, all those thoughts someone has when they near the end. Strangely, he also found himself wondering about the girl that he’d seen at the top of the mountain. It felt strange to him, at least, to be thinking of her, even though she was now looking down at him. She was pretty, he thought, and young. Her bright blue eyes had a look somewhere between curiosity and concern. And then she knelt and gathered him in her arms as if he weighed nothing. And then the world went black.

When the rest of Joseph’s climbing party made it back to the camp that night, they arrived at the mystery of how he had arrived so far ahead of them, and alive.

* * *

Back to Kara’s Arrival

Processing the reality of her situation was to be an enormous and ongoing struggle for Kara Zor-El. On the shore of the gently lapping water Kara learned that her baby cousin was alive, and now many years older than her. She’d listened and deciphered her way through Kal-El’s halting, uncertain Kryptonese. The pronunciation hurt her ears at first, but as she came to realize, he’d really had no need, and certainly no way to truly practice it. As he told her what had happened, she glanced several times towards the now re-masked Batwoman, finding herself wondering what the woman was thinking as she listened to a conversation that she couldn’t understand. As she learned of her cousin being raised by the humans and learning about his heritage, she interrupted him abruptly.

“_Where did you learn of our planet, our family, and our language?”_ she asked, somewhat curtly.

The question caught Kal-El by surprise and he answered it immediately and unguardedly.

“_At the Fortress… my father left crystals for me and…”_

_ “Sunstones!”_ Kara interrupted, her eyes briefly brightening for the first time since she crash landed.

“_Yes exactly. My father Jor-El…” _Kal-El began, only to once more be interrupted.

“_Encoded a copy of his consciousness into the crystals to teach you about Krypton,”_ Kara said knowingly, her eyes starting to dart around as possibilities filled her head. “_My father, your uncle, helped to enhance our understanding and capabilities of just what sunstones could be used for. Can you take me there?”_

And that had led them to the Arctic with Kal-El holding Kara, ensuring her that one day she too would be able to fly. Kal-El talked during their flight but Kara couldn’t hear him. His voice was just one sound amidst a cacophony of noise that assaulted her ears as she heard noises from miles around the areas they flew over. It was only once they were out over water that Kara was given reprieve from the noise down below and was left to hear the air as they soared through it. She looked over at the grown man holding her hair and tried to see the baby that she had last known. The hair and the eyes, she thought, those were the most telling things. The suit he wore was also unquestionably of Kryptonian design, though the color scheme was unlike any she was familiar with.

Kara was aware of the air beginning to get colder as they continued their journey, but like the water it didn’t bother her, nor did it bring her any discomfort. Then the water gave way to a vast white frozen surface beneath her and it made her gasp. Krypton in her lifetime was not known for its beauty, and already she was terrains that she had not witnessed before. And then she saw it. Rising from the icy tundra was an immense structure that looked like ice and crystal had joined to become one. Sharp structures had seemingly burst from the surface to guard the approach to the structure, crisscrossed and topped with jagged edges. Beyond that the main structure easily gave away its alien nature, shaped almost like a pyramid made of crystal that was white tinged with a light blue hue. It seemed to just materialize as they flew to it.

“_I’ve been calling it the Fortress of Solitude,”_ Kal-El told her as he brought them to a hover so that they could look down upon it. “_My father taught me about who I was and where I came from. Out here it was just us, and we are far enough away that the sounds of the world can’t reach us. I am happy to be able to share it with you, Kara.”_

Kal-El descended then towards an area that concealed the entryway. It would be impossible to see much less approach from the ground. When he set her down, he stepped away from her and looked in the snow for a moment before he bent and grasped something. Giving it a little shake before he lifted it, Kal-El lifted from the ground an enormous key nearly six feet in length.

“_Dwarf star material,”_ Kal-El said, anticipating Kara’s question, or simply accurately reading the puzzled look on her face. “_I am the only one able to lift it. Or was, at least. I expect you’ll be able to as well,”_ he said as he casually carried the key, which weighed half a million tons, as easily as a normal man might carry a ladder, towards the entranceway.

“_Why didn’t you shrink its size?” _Kara asked him as she considered the enormous key, and it was now Kal-El’s turn to look puzzled. _Ah_, Kara thought. _He isn’t familiar with miniaturization_. She filed that away.

Kal-El brought the key to a recessed keyhole, and the moment the key was inserted the entranceway dissolved, giving away to the vast interior. Kara stepped inside without hesitation and found herself looking upon a cavernous main chamber illuminated from within the walls itself. Though the material was different than she was familiar with, the architecture was distinctly Kryptonian. One of the last remaining pieces of her home. Hot tears were running down her cheeks before she even realized she was crying.

“_Kara… I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been through. But you’re here now with me. If it means anything to you, I can’t put into words what it means to know that I’m not alone. I’ve lived my whole life thinking that I was, and now you’re here,” _Kal-El intoned gently as he watched his cousin cry, trying to be comforting without pushing her too much. He watched Kara crying silently and decided that giving her a moment might be best.

“_Take some time, look around why don’t you? I’ll be back shortly, I’m going to go bring get the ship you arrived in. It’ll be best that we keep it here,” _he told her, and after watching her a moment more, he silently floated into the air and flew back out of the fortress.

Alone, Kara used the back of her hand to wipe at her tears before she started to walk around the main chamber. Even with the enormity of everything she’d been through she found some comfort being in a place that felt familiar. As she walked the perimeter of the main chamber and looked at its high ceilings, she came upon a gently sloping pathway that led up to the control dais. She made her way there and looked upon it: more than a dozen sunstones were carefully held in protective, cylindrical alcoves, clustered together above three inputs. She did not touch any of them, instead she hovered her hand over them.

In front of her an enormous head materialized, a fully realized bust of Jor-El, enlarged several times over its normal size, the one that she had last seen. It was just then that Kal-El flew back into the Fortress with her ship carried over his head with both hands.

“_Hello, uncle,”_ Kara greeted Jor-El, a mournful note in her voice.

The enormous visage of Jor-El looked upon her and while its expression didn’t change, there was perhaps the faintest note of surprise in its voice when it replied.

“_Kara Zor-El, niece, only child of my brother Jor-El. I had not thought to see you here.”_

_ “When you prepared yourself for this… I don’t think I’d planned to be here either,”_ Kara told him, and she looked to see Kal-El watching them with something between surprise and relief on his face. If he’d had any doubts on the authenticity of her claim, they were surely erased. 

“_Uncle, will you prepare to undo miniaturization?”_ Kara asked, and when she did so the resolve in her voice overshadowed the bit of sadness that had been there before.

Soundlessly a section of the floor on the control dais opened, and another input terminal slid up from where it had been stored, a single input port available on it.

_“Kara, what is this?”_ Kal-El asked her, flying to her side to look at what she had just made happen. “_I had no idea this was here,”_ he told her with a pained look.

“_Your father didn’t just send you an empty chamber,”_ Kara answered as she walked back, carefully selected a sunstone, and brought it to the newly materialized terminal. She gently slid the sunstone into the input terminal, which accepted it and began to hum. The humming grew louder and the chamber itself seemed to tremble with power. And then there was a flash of blinding light.

In the center of the chamber, where there’d been nothing, there was now a robot, its surface a reddish-gold blend. It hovered a foot or two off the ground, putting its long, flat, somewhat rectangular head to hover about five feet high. The front of the head was featureless save for an energy source seeming to travel from one side to the other and back again, spiking and caving randomly. Its head was connected to its body by a think, cable-like structure, and on either side of the body which was like an elongated egg, there were two spindly arms, each with three pinchers.

_“Kara, what is….” _Kal-El began.

“_This is Kelex. He was your father’s. We’re going to show you what this place can truly be.”_

* * *

Days Following the Everest Rescue

It was a cool fall night in Gotham City that found Batwoman perched atop a gargoyle looking down on her city. By having her eyes concealed by white starlight lenses it made her demeanor almost impossible to discern simply by looking at her. With her cape wrapped around her she nearly became a part of the gothic architecture. If she knew that she was being watched she gave absolutely no indication while she observed the movement of the city below her, watching, listening, waiting.

“I’m hard to sneak up on, Kara,” she said softly, still unmoving. Even in a soft tone, Batwoman’s voice carried a certain power, an edge that warned of a potential danger.

Behind her Kara Zor-El looked surprised and curious by this. She considered her approach and evaluated their positions and filed away the details she gathered, to be analyzed later.

“I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you,” she lied.

Batwoman rose from her crouch as a cat unfurled from its nap and turned to face the Kryptonian teenager. Kara was floating two feet above the gargoyle, and was dressed in a red hooded sweatshirt, worn open atop a black, Kryptonian bodysuit. Batwoman was unsure if it was the same one the girl had arrived in, but it was very similar regardless. No, different she noted, noticing that the crest of the House of El was slightly raised on this version, and was accented with silver along its edges.

“Your English is getting better,” the woman noted, and her voice changed slightly, a little less Batwoman, a bit more Kate Kane. “Don’t you think your outfit might be a bit… conspicuous?” she asked.

“Three people on this planet know who I am,” Kara replied with a little shake of her head. She lowered down from where she’d been hovering, her boots touching down gently on the stone. “I am told the humans can buy attire with the symbol of my house as well,” she noted with a touch of distain reaching her voice.

“Fair enough,” Kate allowed with a smirk. Kara immediately found herself smiling as well, mimicking Kate’s bright red, painted lips.

“Speaking, though, of not being conspicuous? Batman told me of a curious story out of Nepal.” As she said this Kate began to watch Kara’s expression carefully. “An American mountain climber was air rescued from the mountain. Nearly died. In the hospital he said that he saw a girl in a sweatshirt at the summit of the mountain, and that she rescued him when his party had to leave him behind.”

Kara didn’t give up the game immediately. She looked thoughtful upon hearing this news.

“A very high altitude and the low oxygen there can lead to....” Kara frowned as she paused to find the English word for it, after having slipped in a Kryptonian word. “Visions. False visions,” she settled on.

Even though Kate felt quite confident in Batman’s conclusion on the matter, she felt her lips pulling into a wider smile as Kara refused to break at the first push. She could admire that.

“You are right about that. But when the rest of his party came down from the mountain, they also had an interesting story to tell. They admitted that they’d left him behind… but also that, somehow, near death, he made it back to base camp _before_ them,” Kate went on. “And another climber said that he also thought he saw someone at the summit, but he couldn’t be sure.”

Listening to the evidence being presented, Kara finally nodded her head and stopped pushing back at it.

“He was dying. They left him to die,” she said simply.

Kate nodded her head once and then there was silence for a time as she regarded the girl standing across from her. There was a certain innocent simplicity to Kara’s statement that Kate couldn’t argue with. It was fact by any measure.

“You did the right thing, Kara. Batman was upset because he and your cousin want to keep your presence a secret. But you saved someone, no one can deny that,” Kate told her.

“He is unhappy with me for removing his computers from the Fortress,” Kara said very matter of factly.

“That may be true,” Kate answered. “Why were you up at the summit of Mt. Everest by yourself?”

Kara thought for a few moments on how best to answer that.

“I first went there to see why humans risked their lives to get there. And I found it to be beautiful. Now I sometimes go there to think. It is quiet, remote.... I do not have to try to block anything out.”

“I can see the appeal. Maybe just try to not be noticed up there, next time? At least not in regular street clothes?” Kate suggested.

“I do not understand why they want me to be a secret on this planet. You all have lives and family… I only have Kal-El. There is no one who could be hurt by this.”

Kate nodded her head slowly and then turned to look back out over the city. No sooner had she done so then she became aware that Kara was floating next to her. It conjured the ghost of a smile once more.

“I’m not sure I am the best one to answer that for you, Kara. I didn’t have a hand in the decision making,” she points out.

“You do not agree with it then?” Kara asked, seizing on Kate’s choice of words.

“I didn’t say that,” Kate countered, “I only said that I didn’t choose it. Your cousin, Batman, me, we all had a choice in what we became. I think they only want to give you that same chance. The life you knew was taken from you, Kara. But you are here, now, and it seems only right that you have time to grow, learn, experience this planet, and decide what you want to do with your life.”

Kara was silent as she contemplated that. As she turned the words over in her head, she found no new avenue to debate the point. 

“I am not being allowed to choose what happens next, in order that I may choose later,” she said and there was a note of annoyance in her voice. “My cousin wants me to start ‘high school’ tomorrow.”

“Its already tomorrow,” Kate mentioned, aware that the hour had past midnight. “It’s a good thing for you to do. You’ll have a chance to see what people your age do on this planet, and you’ll get to experience it rather than just read about it. Its…. hold on,” Kate stopped abruptly, as the receivers hidden in her cowl began to pick up Gotham PD radio traffic.

Kara looked at Kate and then looked down at Gotham. She closed her eyes and listened, searching through the constant, ever-changing noise from the active city. She heard a loud crack and immediately followed it, aided by there being another, and another.

“Gunshots,” Kara announced, blue eyes snapping open. And when she did so she saw that Batwoman was no longer next to her. It took her a moment to find her gliding with her cape deeper into the city. Kara brought her hands up in front of her and her legs lifted to bring her body parallel to the ground so far below. And then she was flying after Batwoman, down into the city and towards the sounds of danger.

From her vantage point gliding Batwoman couldn’t immediately find her targets, so she dipped her left arm and banked sharply to find a better angle. Now, nearly skimming across the rooftops, she saw them, three men running down below, one armed with a black handgun. Batwoman dropped soundlessly onto a rooftop above them and then ran in pursuit, nimbly navigating the uneven roof while taking a few glances to make sure her quarry didn’t change directions. As she ran, her right hand dipped to a compartment on her belt and grabbed a pellet from inside, while her left hand slid back along her body and freed her grapnel gun from where it was housed.

Batwoman stopped running and threw the pallet ahead of her into the alley, watching it travel over the fleeing men before it lost momentum and began to travel towards the ground. She timed it, and at the precise moment she fired the grapnel towards an adjacent rooftop and leapt. The pellet, a miniaturized flashbang, exploded with a bright light and thunderous sound that reverberated in the alley and completely masked the sound of the grapnel firing. The flash was not a one off, as the pellet disintegrated it revealed a miniaturized strobe that would flash every half-second for thirty full seconds.

The lenses in Batwoman’s mask adjusted to compensate for the strobe, but the men in the alley were not so fortunate, and then she was amongst them, first using the momentum of her swing to drive her boots into the back of the man holding the pistol, launching him forward.

"It’s the Bat!” one yelled, a true, but unhelpful observation as Batwoman leapt, spun, and kicked him as hard as she could, the heel of her boot connecting just above his ear. In the strobing light her movements seemed unnaturally fast and disorienting. The last man standing tried, at least, to fight her. He swung a punch at her head that she ducked under, and tried to drive his fist into her stomach, only to have that blow turned away by her forearm. She was faster, and when she punched him in the stomach it connected. As he started to lean forward, the air knocked from him, she grabbed him by the back of the neck, wrenched his head down, and cracked his face with her knee. He was falling just as the strobe gave its last three flashes.

In the last few seconds of the fight, a fourth man, a straggler from the initial group and also armed with a pistol, entered the far end of the alley. He saw what was happening but couldn’t be sure he’d be able to hit Batwoman and not one of his friends. He waited to try and get a clear shot. For a moment that opportunity seemed to be at hand. He aimed and started to squeeze the trigger, and then Batwoman moved, and he perceived her flick her wrist before three shining objects were flying towards him. He tried to track her and finally pulled the trigger. The sound of the gunshot crackled in the alley, followed by his scream.

It took Batwoman a moment to realize what had happened. Her view of the last man was blocked by Kara’s body which had not been there a moment ago. As she approached, she saw the Kryptonian teenager was holding a partially crushed pistol in one hand, and Batwoman’s three batarangs in her other hand. The screaming was from the fourth man, and was likely due to the badly broken fingers that he’d just sustained. When he started to take a breath to scream something obscene at them, Batwoman knocked him unconscious with one swift punch.

“I didn’t need help,” she told Kara in her fiercest Batwoman voice. The lenses in her mask retracted and she fixed the teenager with a steely look.

“I know,” Kara answered, and it was a half-truth. “I only wanted to see if I could catch all four.”

“Four?” Batwoman asked.

Kara offered Batwoman back her three batarangs, and when their hands touched, she tilted her hand and dropped the bullet that she had caught into woman’s gloved hand.

Batwoman didn’t say anything, and Kara didn’t let the silence linger long.

“I need to get ready if I’m trying school,” Kara said. “Goodnight,” and with that she raised her hands above her hands and flew up into the night sky.

Batwoman watched the Kryptonian fly off and she stopped holding back the smile that she’d been suppressing. As the sound of sirens began to grow louder signaling the imminent arrival of Gotham PD, Batwoman readied her grapnel, fired it towards a rooftop, and was gone, leaving just the four unconscious men behind.

* * *

Later

Batwoman stood on the rooftop and she could feel dawn coming. It was in these moments minutes of full darkness that she could find peace, another night of the mission complete.

“She was here tonight.”

Batwoman had to steel herself to not show a startle response. She didn’t need to look to see who had spoken, nor was she surprised that Batman had been able to sneak up on her. One day she hoped that would no longer be possible. For now, it was something that she just dealt with. She turned to look at him. She was well able to move effectively in the darkness and yet still, just feet away from her, Batman seemed to _wear_ it just the same as he wore his cape and cowl.

“Yes. She doesn’t like what you two have planned for her.”

“It’s necessary for now. They may be family, but she is different from him. We don’t know who she is, or what she…”

“She’s a _teenager_ Bruce. When I was a teenager, I pushed back at the world too.”

“She is a teenager who is powerful enough to push the world without the world being able to push back. She removed the computers and monitoring devices from…”

“She thought you’d be mad about that.”

“I don’t know if we can trust her. Until I do? We watch her.”

Kate found herself shaking her head. She looked away and saw the first light beginning to show. She started to say something, then turned back, and as she’d expected, Batman was already gone.


End file.
